One of the themes of my Visions of Empire setting is that the Terrans of 2260 AD just came out of a major war with the Reticulans, so most gear you'll find is decommissioned military stuff and/or military surplus. I'd like my 300-ton Trader to be an ex-military ship, decommissioned and stripped of most military-grade systems. But I'm not sure what the initial military ship class would be?

A jump-capable assault-lander for a section or platoon? Would this be logical to mass-produce (as usually soldiers are deployed by battalion transports or at least company-level transports)

A small military supply ship/auxiliary?

Any other ideas?

It should allow for a good amount of cargo and passengers, probably Jump-2 (maybe even Jump-3?) and 3-G acceleration.

_________________We are but a tiny candle flickering against the darkness of our times.

_________________Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards. Sir Frederick HoyleEarth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever. Konstantin TsiolkovskyMan has earned the right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone completely bat**** insane. xkcd #556Just like people, stars can be very important without being terribly bright. Phil Plait, "Bad Astronomy"

Commerce Raider might make sense - it was used to harrass Reticulan shipping all over their empire. You would want good Jump, Thrust and cargo space for the 'liberated' goods.

The Barbettes have been removed and exchanged for Turrets and the extra 4 tons are now small cargo holds in weird places.

I suggest doing the original design, with layout, and then strip it down and pull out the equipment and see what the design looks like then. It could be really interesting with lots of little cubby-holes and out-of-the way spaces that don't seem to make sense now, but work perfectly in the original design - corridors leading down to a dead end that used to be the Combat Control Center and is now just an empty space with little or no way to load large cargo pallets into it...

Troop transport. Perhaps the Terran Heavy Infantry are all in battle dress and grav belts and carry a variety of weapons so they're very lean on the organic heavy support, instead choosing their battlefields and "raiding" more than conquering, serving as skirmishers and raiders. A 300-ton displacement ship might be capable of deploying a hundred of such soldiers with room for the quarters, stores, spares, and so on. It would also give them the tactical and strategic agility to be deployed separately from the larger combat armored infantry formations to where they're needed.

Cargo transports. In my Crusade Across the Stars campaign, smaller military cargo transports are a thing. While everyone understands economy of scale resulting in increasing savings for the larger the ship, the militaries typically have "highliner" (the lovechild between a Herbert's "Dune" Guild highliner and a modern container vessel - it carries fully-loaded planetary landers on a huge "spine" and stops just long enough in-orbit disgorge landers and pick them up while concurrently things like crew changes and refuelling occurs, then it jumps out), "transport vessel" (more like a straight container vessel today), and a "frontier transport." The frontier transport would be a smaller cargo transport. This is fulfill a niche transport need which requires a ship that is more responsive than the larger cargo transport to move things, not from a depot to the operations areas, but between operations areas. They also make up about 40% of the logistics fleets - because shipyards that can make the huge (and cost-effective) transports are limited, a grinding large war requires more cargo capacity than they can produce, so many smaller shipyards make frontier transports to aid in the war effort. The frontier transport is designed to be rugged, field-repairable, and contains many features that are lower-tech than standard because they can be field maintained. The ships make do with as little microelectronics as possible because older, mechanical systems can be field repaired and spare parts fashioned more easily. That such systems have a much higher maintenance burden and require larger crews is accepted - sophisticated microelectronics can be in short supply in the deep frontier, but crewmembers can always be found.

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